How to write a great speech: 5 secrets for success

David McCloud, the Chief of Staff of the Governor of Virginia, taught me how to write a great speech:

• Great speeches are primarily emotional, not logical • Small shifts in tone make an enormous difference to the audience, so sweat the details • A great speech has a clear voice speaking throughout• A great speech conveys one idea only, though it can have lots of supporting points• A great speech answers a great need

The lesson nearly killed me. I had a PhD in literature and rhetoric, and I was teaching at the University of Virginia, when the Governor, Chuck Robb, plucked me from academic obscurity to write speeches for him. The previous speechwriter had cracked under the strain, and had taken to shouting Nazi war slogans and charging around the office barefoot using his hatrack as a battering ram. So of course he had to go; he alarmed the Governor’s State Police detail too much.

I don’t know why that didn’t worry me too much at the time. I suppose I was blinded by the opportunity to put my academic ideals into practice. I was installed in the same office, and I spent most of the first day or two looking at the hatrack and wondering how bad it would have to get before I was tempted to pick it up and go horizontal with it too.

David called me into his office on Day Three for my first assignment. Four death-row inmates had escaped from Mecklenburg State Prison and were wandering around loose in the Virginia countryside alarming everyone. The Governor had to give a speech to show that he was in control of the situation.

“The truth is,” said David, “that no one pays any attention to prisons until someone escapes. Then everyone wants to know why we don’t spend more money, hire more guards, do whatever it takes to keep scary people from getting out. Write a speech which says that we care about voters’ security but won’t waste their money either.”

I made a face. “But those two things are logically contradictory.”

“Your first lesson in real speechwriting,” said David. “Logic has nothing to do with it. Figure it out.”

Clutching my logic and my expensive education in rhetoric, I went back to my office to figure it out. For about half a day I stared at the computer screen with no idea how to begin. At some point, David popped into my office to see how I was getting on. He took in my lack of progress at a glance.

“Think John Wayne,” he said. “Make the Governor tough.”

So I thought about what John Wayne would have said if he’d been the governor, and shortly a script began to form on the screen. I wrote, re-wrote, and finally had a draft that I thought was pure gubernatorial magic. I handed it in to David.

A few hours later, an email arrived. “My office. Now.”

David scowled at me when I walked in. “This is the worst first draft I’ve ever seen,” he said. “It’s ridiculous. It’s too much John Wayne, not enough Governor. Go back and try again.”

So I did. I took John Wayne out and let in the sweet light of reason instead. I handed in what I thought was a much more measured draft to David the next morning.

This time he came to me. “This is the second worst draft I’ve ever seen,” he said. “The governor sounds like a Sesame Street character. Give him his cojones back.”

He left. I bowed my head over the screen. This was not the enlightened political discourse I had been expecting. I looked at the hatrack. Then I wrote another draft.

Before I got that speech right – and David satisfied with it – I wrote twelve drafts. John Wayne and Sesame Street came and went. I added sections on prison spending and took them out. I put in an update on the search for the escapees and revised it over and over again. I researched Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward prisons and put in a section quoting him. It wasn’t until Draft 11 that David thought it was even worth sending it to the Governor for him to look at.

“OK,” he said. “It’s not great, but it’s OK for a first try.”

David was not my favorite person in the world that week, or for a number of weeks after. But in the end I realized that in being tough on me he had given me an enormous gift: he had taught me how to push myself to do better than I thought I possibly could. And he taught me how to write a speech. In the real world. Great speeches are primarily emotional, not logical. Small shifts in tone and phrasing make an enormous difference to the audience, so sweat the details. A great speech has a clear voice speaking throughout. A great speech conveys one idea only, though it can have lots of supporting points. And most of all: a great speech answers a great need.

Thanks, Jeff and Charlotte for the kind comments. There’s a lesson for all managers in the way David told me to get it done, but left me in charge of how to get it done. That’s why I had to figure it out….

Great tips!
I agree with each of them.
And I loved that story, really gave me great insights into the world of speech writing. I am currently on my 5th revision of a speech that I want to make sure includes the 5 secrets.
Thx Nick!

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